COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Watch those USB thumb drives gentlemen


WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.

While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.

The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target

107 comments:

  1. On Monday night I will be leaving for a trip to Belgium, France and Poland. I will have very little time to do any blogging but will check in when possible. Take turns posting.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, learn what happens when Jews vote for Gun Control.

      Delete
    2. I do not believe Jews voted for gun control in NAZI Germany.

      Delete
    3. Now that I think about, I do not believe they voted for gas chambers or ovens either. For sure, the one million children murdered had no chance to vote.

      Delete
    4. Maybe Ms T should take a trip to Israel. Learn something too.... jews have guns there...

      Delete
  2. time tells the tale

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before...Swooosh...Thud!

      Delete

  3. “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”

    ― Sun Tzu

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Teresita,

      Tell me true, is this you?!

      Delete
    2. I only post under my Blogger log-in, never as A.C. (Anonymous Coward).

      Delete
    3. Come on Ms T, Teresita, Catholic Lady., Xenia, you create blogger logins almost as fast I change socks..

      Delete
  4. Who's the anonymous invader?

    Have a good trip deuce.

    I am nearly certain now that a USB card inserted surreptitiously into my computer was the cause of my google account getting all screwed up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You really have no suspicions?

      Delete
    2. Deep Wisdom from the Deep Throated one, Get It?

      Delete
  5. That one thumb looks like a nice buttplug.

    My schedule is open, Deuce, can I come with?

    ReplyDelete
  6. If the rat is back we won't have any fun posting.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We'll be lost in a Sea of Rat Litter.

      Delete
    2. It'll be the shits again, and it has been so wonderfully nice around here.....

      Delete
    3. Quirk even apologized to me, and I accepted the apology.

      Fancy that.

      That's how nice it has been around here lately.

      May it never change.

      Delete
    4. I thought we were in a race to the bottom with the Q-Man.

      Guess I won.

      Delete
    5. No matter! Keep that mallet and stake handy. Some chicken soup couldn't hurt either. You have been warned.

      Delete
  7. The agency's activities "are focused and specifically deployed against - and only against - valid foreign intelligence targets in response to intelligence requirements," the NSA said in a statement, adding that Dishfire processed and lawfully stored collected text-message, or SMS data.

    "Because some SMS data of U.S. persons may at times be incidentally collected in NSA's lawful foreign intelligence mission, privacy protections for U.S. persons exist across the entire process concerning the use, handling, retention, and dissemination of SMS data in DISHFIRE," the agency said.

    "In addition, NSA actively works to remove extraneous data, to include that of innocent foreign citizens, as early as possible in the process," it said.

    ReplyDelete
  8. "Because some SMS data of U.S. persons may at times be incidentally collected in NSA's lawful foreign intelligence mission, We have restricted public access to only those who have registered Starbucks Apps on their phones."

    ReplyDelete
  9. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a potential 2016 Republican presidential contender, is trying to refocus the debate over National Security Agency surveillance on the terrorists who actually succeed in pulling off attacks in the United States.

    ...

    When Cruz questioned members of Obama’s advisory panel on NSA reforms, one member, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein pointed to a key recommendation the panel has made that would give expanded emergency powers to the NSA to track terrorists suspects as soon as they the enter the United States, even before a warrant is granted.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cass Sunstein, International Crime Fighter, and Man of Mystery.

      Delete
  10. CMS official says they have no idea how many sign ups to Obamacare have actually paid. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Probably not a lot, since the sign-ups are the ones who need a subsidy.

      Delete
    2. There's an outside possibility that none have paid........after all, that is the responsibility of someone else......

      Delete
  11. Hold your noses: MOME's occupation is Crop Dusting.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Other Crop Dusters you may know:

      Jammers and
      Catwoman


      Interests:

      Cervical vaccines, horses, pick up trucks, Gerard Butler, trying to guess what the weather will be like tomorrow in Ohio, thick defined sideburns, Jean Jean the denim machine, the Gays, the lesbians, and the straights when they're liberal, cigarettes when they're not being smoked we're talkin 120's here people, craft shows, baby rabies, dollar dog night at the Cleveland Indians Stadium, Playing truth or dare with our good friends, and then they're not our good friends the next day, vampires, and dogs that don't weight more than 20 pounds, and our friends babies, singing on the singstar like we are Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, and eating Gioninno's pizza until we explode from grease, Chealsea Lately, Ganglion cyst, Crop dusting, Cleaning

      Delete
    2. I never met a crop duster I didn't like.......and I've met several.....

      Delete
    3. They're talking the Urban Dictionary Kind, like you and me.

      In my "Environmental Science" class by leading edge environmentalist Norman Sanders, (we're talking the seventies, when he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, no less, Norman played some kind of switcheroo for an hour, and then let us in on it by addressing his good friends daily occupation, Crop Duster.

      Norman's down in Sammyland again.

      What was that story here about a duster dumping himself up into some powerlines?

      Delete
  12. .

    Obama will report on NSA surveillance this Friday.

    Consensus: Don't expect much change.


    A rare insight from a former Obama aide.

    So while instituting additional procedural changes, Mr. Obama undertook no major overhaul of the surveillance programs he inherited. “He’s sitting on the other end of the pen now,” said the former Obama aide. “He has more information than he did then. And he trusts himself to use these powers more than he did the Bush administration.”

    What president wouldn't trust himself more than the other presidents?

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/us/obamas-path-from-critic-to-defender-of-spying.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

    .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gazing into my navel, after removing the lint, I look into the past to be a seer of the future: Candidate Obama opposed it in principle - President Obama entrenches it in practice.

      Delete
  13. .

    Harry Reid says Bob Gates only denigrates people in his book as a way to drive sales.

    Likely, Harry is just mad because he has to do it for free.

    .

    ReplyDelete
  14. “It was a great conversation," Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters at a press briefing. Since Gates’s book has created a stir in Washington and prompted defensive statements from the White House Kirby was asked if Hagel had an opinion on the book.

    “He's not going to take a position on the opinions that are expressed in the book or make a statement about whether the book should have been written or not,” said Kirby. He restated that last week during a tour of an Air Force base in New Mexico, Hagel had said he was not going to second-guess the motivations of others.

    ...

    Gates did not take any questions from the press who showed up to cover the book signing, though he did take a quick question from someone in line who asked Gates if he had become a Seattle Seahawks fan. “Absolutely,” said a smiling Gates, who retired to Washington state after he finished his tour as defense secretary.

    ReplyDelete
  15. UNDERSTANDING ENGINEERS #5

    The graduate with a science degree asks, "Why does it work?" The
    graduate with an engineering degree asks, "How does it work?" The
    graduate with an accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?" The
    graduate with an arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Poli Sci Graduate Asserts:

      "If I am elected, you'll get a free order of fries with that!"

      Delete
  16. On this day in 1973, the final episode of Bonanza aired, ending a 14-year run for the western TV series.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Foreign Policy Has Left Obama A Global Laughing Stock

    Having re-elected a president of such far-reaching foreign policy incompetence, the U.S. has become a global embarrassment. High-ranking defense officials in allied governments now openly laugh and scoff at our president and secretary of state.
    But it is gallows humor. The danger to American lives far outweighs the mirth.



    ReplyDelete
  18. BAUCHI, Nigeria — A young man convicted of sodomy was whipped 20 times Thursday in a northern Nigerian Shariah court. Though Mubarak Ibrahim was found guilty under Shariah law, it is the first conviction of a gay man in Nigeria since President Goodluck Jonathan signed a bill that further criminalizes homosexuality under the West African nation's Western-style penal code.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If they were truly enlightened, they give him the option of engaging in sodomy while getting whipped.

      Yee Hah!

      Delete
    2. Got to LOVE Sharia.... But I wonder, why the outrage? After all you usually reserve your anger at Israel and Jews and their noses....

      Delete
    3. "You're outs a luck, Mubarak."

      Signed,

      Goodluck Jonathon

      Delete
    4. My "anger" at Israel is focused on certain screwups like the Liberty or Pollard, or making women ride in the back of the bus, or not letting them wail at the Wall. At least when the Jews whipped people they kept it under forty stripes.

      Delete
    5. Israel doesn't make women ride in the back of the bus.

      "or not letting them wail at the Wall." Man are you misinformed.

      Women have access to the wall, in fact the most sacred of site of the wall.

      You really don't have a clue...

      Delete
    6. Ms t, your issue with Jews are wide and deep.

      Hense your attacks on Jews, Judaism and Israel.

      Might I suggest you take a trip and learn something. Nothing beats an education.

      you are un-educated.

      Delete
    7. And you are demonstrably a fucking genius. Issues? Psalm 23:5: your “cup runneth over” and over and over.

      Delete
    8. And your intelligence certainly shines through that comment, Jenny.

      Are you a fundie?

      Delete
  19. Rat, the homosexual war criminalThu Jan 16, 10:43:00 PM EST

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What happened? I thought there was a gatekeeper???

      Delete
    2. Deuce's idea of humor... leave the barn yard door open...

      Delete
    3. Just when he's fixin to leave.

      Delete
    4. When the Rancher returns the ill nourished cattle will be sold.

      Delete
    5. It's a sad day in the Barnyard.

      Delete
    6. It an NSA operative I tell ya.
      We're on their radar

      We be doomed I tell ya
      DOOMED!

      :)

      Delete
    7. :)

      DOOMED!-R-Us

      (an enders club)

      "We're all doomed, and we all deserve to be doomed"

      For membership consideration contact:

      Jenny
      c/o Q
      Box 100000001
      Detroit, Michigan

      Self addressed stamped return envelope required.

      Delete
    8. What could possibly go wrong? NSA overreach, Patriot Act overreach, Guantanamo, Telecom Immunity, Healthcare Reform Transparency, Lobbyist Influence, Corrupt DC Public/Private Swing Door ... no fucking problem. The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. Why would I trust...

      Delete
    9. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    10. Hope and Change is in Obama’s pen and speed-dialer.

      Delete
  20. "... the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet,..."

    Well somebody has to get control of the information on the web lest the masses get too uppity for the elite's liking.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Nina Davuliri puts on a dance show -

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63HVkXdmKG8

    ReplyDelete
  22. The Irish Millionaire

    Mick, from Dublin, appeared on 'Who Wants To Be a Millionaire'

    and toward the end of the program had already won 500,000 pounds.



    "You've done very well so far," said Chris Tarrant, the show's presenter,

    "but for a million pounds, you've got only one life-line left, phone a friend.

    Everything is riding on this question. Will you go for it?"

    "Sure," said Mick. "I'll have a go!"



    "Which of the following birds does NOT build its own nest?
    a) Sparrow

    b) Thrush,

    c) Magpie,

    d) Cuckoo?"

    “I haven't got a clue." said Mick,
    “So I'll use me last lifeline and phone my friend Paddy back home in Dublin."

    Mick called up his mate Paddy,
    and told him the circumstances and repeated the question to him.


    "Bloody’ hell, Mick!" cried Paddy. "Dat's simple - it's a cuckoo."
    "Are you sure?"
    "I’m Bloody’ sure."
    Mick hung up the phone and told Chris, "I'll go with cuckoo as me answer."
    "Is that your final answer?" asked Chris.
    "Dat it is."

    There was a long, long pause and then the presenter screamed,
    "Cuckoo is the correct answer! Mick, you've won 1 million pounds!"
    The next night, Mick invited Paddy to their local pub to buy him a drink.
    "Tell me, Paddy? How in Heaven's name did you know it was da Cuckoo
    that doesn't build its own nest?"

    "Because he lives in a Bloody clock !!!"

    ReplyDelete
  23. Privacy and security is the defining issue of our age and Obama is fucking it up. Obama hasn't had an opinion in six years. He just acts for his advisors as a yes man. Without privacy there is no freedom and terrorists have won. I would rather the risk of a remote terrorist threat than lose, in perpetuity, freedoms that will never be returned.

    Here in Virginia, Senator Mark Warner, a leading apologist for the excesses of the NSA, is going to be up for re-election. I can hardly wait for the opportunity to vote against him.

    Unfortunately, what is most likely to happen is that the election will revolve about personalities, inanities, and sponsored talking-point stances on peripheral issues, just as in the past. Moreover, since it is more than 15 minutes away, 90% of the electorate will have forgotten about the issue.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wonderfully well said !!

      You don't sound doomed to me.

      Delete

    2. Ex-GOP Chief Ed Gillespie Challenges Va. Sen. Mark Warner

      Thursday, 16 Jan 2014 02:38 PM

      Ed Gillespie, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, announced Thursday that he plans to challenge Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner in the November election.

      "I'm running for Senate because the American dream is being undermined by policies that move us way from constitutional principles of limited government and personal liberty," Gillespie said in a video statement on YouTube.

      Story continues below video.



      Gillespie, a former adviser to the 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, criticized Warner for supporting Obamacare, maintaining that it "kills jobs and costs families the insurance and doctors they like."

      "Sen. Warner cast the deciding vote" for the healthcare law, Gillespie said, adding, "If I were a Virginia senator, it would not be law today."

      Gillespie, a former political operative and White House aide, had been serving as chairman of the Republican State Legislative Committee before he declared his Senate bid.

      The Democrats were quick to respond to his announcement, according to Roll Call.

      Matt Canter, deputy executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, released a statement saying, "The truth is that Mark Warner is recognized by both Democrats and Republicans as a leader in the Senate in working across party lines to achieve common sense solutions, and Virginians won't be fooled by the negative campaign of Gillespie and his special interest allies."

      In the YouTube video, Gillespie introduced his family and talked about how he has worked his way up from his start in politics as a parking attendant at the Senate while going to college.

      "Over the years, with lots of people's help and advice, I rose from that parking lot to the West Wing, serving as counselor to the president of the United States," he said.

      Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/gillespie-warner-virginia-senate/2014/01/16/id/547500#ixzz2qdZpQVDK
      Urgent: Should Obamacare Be Repealed? Vote Here Now!

      Delete
    3. And -

      Former RNC chair Ed Gillespie announces Senate run against Virginia’s Warner


      posted at 10:11 pm on January 16, 2014 by Mary Katharine Ham

      You might say, the map has expanded in 2014.

      Ed Gillespie for Senate:


      WASHINGTON — Former Republican Party chairman Ed Gillespie jumped into the U.S. Senate race in Virginia on Thursday, taking aim at Democratic incumbent Mark Warner in one of the nation’s most-watched swing states.

      “I’m running for Senate because the American Dream is being undermined by policies that move us away from constitutional principles of limited government and personal liberty,” Gillespie said in a campaign video.

      Gillespie, a longtime communications strategist and political operative, has been talking to Virginia GOP activists for weeks as he assessed a challenge to Warner, a popular ex-governor who has already socked away $7.1 million for the 2014 campaign. Gillespie has told people in Virginia that he believes the Senate race is “winnable.”

      But Gillespie faces an uphill battle as becomes a first-time candidate.

      Here’s his intro video, stressing his humble roots and rise from Senate car-parker to West Wing adviser:



      A little stilted at moments, but strikes a nice, measured tone, hitting Warner for voting to increase the national debt by trillions and backing ObamaCare. I particularly like the line about the “new normal” being the “old mediocre,” and that the future can look better. Warner is an extremely popular politician, but he’s voted for extremely unpopular things. The fact that Gillespie, who’s no political novice despite being a first-time candidate, is throwing in illustrates how generous Republicans think the wave might be in 2014.

      Warner responds by saying “Bush.”


      Well before the low-key debut of Gillespie’s website, the Senate Democrats’ campaign committee began attacking Gillespie’s work as a lobbyist for companies such as Enron and his tenure in the Bush administration. The Democrats are also highlighting Gillespie’s support of a comprehensive immigration overhaul with a path to citizenship, arguing his policy views could spark problems with Tea Party conservatives in Virginia.

      “When Virginians get to know Ed Gillespie, they won’t like what they see,” said Matt Canter, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “The last thing Virginians need in Washington is a career lobbyist with a partisan history of slash-and-burn politics that divides Virginians.

      Said the party that just elected Terry McAuliffe governor.

      Delete
  24. Maybe were all doomed after all --

    Just in from Fox News........

    In New Mexico 1 out of every 7 ObamaCare navigators turned up in a search on the FBI's felony records list.......

    ........a real confidence builder, no?

    ReplyDelete
  25. “In previewing Obama’s speech, White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Thursday that the president believed the government could make surveillance activities “more transparent in order to give the public more confidence about the problems and the oversight of the programs". Ironic asshole, is he not?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jay Carney is lacking that necessary human ingredient......a soul.......

      Delete
  26. Replies
    1. heh :)

      Doug, toner down, or you get deleted......

      ;)

      Delete
  27. British defense analyst blasts Obama military and foreign policies as “clueless”


    posted at 12:01 pm on January 16, 2014 by Ed Morrissey




    This comes not from an armchair analyst, but a senior adviser to the British military — our closest allies in war and diplomacy. Sir Hew Strachan doesn’t think highly of George Bush’s foreign policies and war strategies, but as he says, at least Bush had strategies. Barack Obama … not so much:


    President Obama is “chronically incapable” of military strategy and falls far short of his predecessor George W. Bush, according to one of Britain’s most senior military advisors.

    Sir Hew Strachan, an advisor to the Chief of the Defense Staff, told The Daily Beast that the United States and Britain were guilty of total strategic failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Obama’s attempts to intervene on behalf of the Syrian rebels “has left them in a far worse position than they were before.”

    Strachan, a current member of the Chief of the Defense Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel, cited the “crazy” handling of the Syrian crisis as the most egregious example of a fundamental collapse in military planning that began in the aftermath of 9/11. “If anything it’s gone backwards instead of forwards, Obama seems to be almost chronically incapable of doing this. Bush may have had totally fanciful political objectives in terms of trying to fight a global War on Terror, which was inherently astrategic, but at least he had a clear sense of what he wanted to do in the world. Obama has no sense of what he wants to do in the world,” he said.

    Strachan is particularly disenchanted with Obama’s handling of Syria and the red lines for chemical weapons use, as the Daily Mail reports:


    ‘What he’s done in talking about Red Lines in relation to Syria has actually devalued the deterrent effect of American military capability and it seems to me that creates an unstable situation, because if he were act it would surprise everybody,’ he said.

    ‘I think the other issue is that in starting and stopping with Assad, he’s left those who might be his natural allies in Syria with nowhere to go. He’s increased the likelihood that if there is a change of regime in Syria that it will be an Islamic fundamentalist one.’

    This conclusion should hardly surprise anyone. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report states the same thing, although the committee unsurprisingly left that as an implication than an explicit condemnation. The disaster in Benghazi didn’t start on September 11, 2012, or even December 2011 when State first waived security requirements for our consulate in the city. It began when Obama led NATO into decapitating the Qaddafi regime without any thought or provision for what would happen afterward, and then blithely ignored the reality on the ground as the rest of the Western nations packed up and left Benghazi.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In my column today for The Fiscal Times, I point out that the conclusion of ultimate responsibility is painfully obvious, as is the real reason for the debacle in Libya and North Africa:


      One does not need a name at the top of this report to know where responsibility rests for this massive failure. Hillary Clinton ran State, Leon Panetta ran Defense, and David Petraeus ran the CIA. But the distributed nature of the failure indicts the Obama administration and Barack Obama himself, too. The White House is responsible for interagency coordination, for one thing, especially when it comes to national security and diplomatic enterprises.

      However, Obama’s responsibility extends farther and more specifically, too. The reason that eastern Libya had transformed into a terrorist haven in the first place was because of the Obama-led NATO intervention that deposed Moammar Qaddafi without any effort to fill the security vacuum his abrupt departure created.

      Four months before the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Daniel Larison warned that the vacuum left by that 30,000-foot intervention not only meant trouble for the West in eastern Libya, but throughout North Africa as al Qaeda and its affiliates entrenched themselves. Sure enough, al Qaeda infused itself into a Tuareg rebellion and almost topped Mali, an effort which France belatedly stamped out with a boots-on-the-ground intervention – with those boots transported in part by the US Air Force. At the time, theFinancial Times called Mali “among the most embarrassing boomerangs” of American policy, specifically noting “the blowback in the Sahel from the overthrow of Colonel Moammar Gaddafi in Libya.”

      The policies and actions of the Obama administration in Libya left behind a failed state, and the incompetent handling of security and readiness afterward left four Americans to die needlessly. The buck stops at the top for this mess.

      The somewhat more sympathetic Amy Davidson reached the same conclusion from the report at The New Yorker:


      The talking-points controversy was always strangely misdirected—in part because, as this report makes clear, there is a lot that was substantively wrong with the way things were managed in Benghazi. That is true particularly if the subject of discussion is Hillary Clinton. She does not come out well in this report, in any part, although the Republican minority is more florid in its criticisms. The State Department made mistakes when she was its leader. One of the findings is that nothing changed even when “tripwires” meant to prompt an increase in security or suspension in operations had been crossed, and people in the Department knew it.

      Delete
    2. Why not? She doesn’t really have an answer; in the past, she has deflected questions by pointing out that Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who died in Benghazi, was someone she knew well and cared about; there is no doubt that he was. Despite her performance at a hearing last year, when she wondered why exactly what happened really mattered, callous indifference is not the answer here. (That won’t stop the clip of her testimony from playing in political ads if she runs for President.) But her reluctance to change course may have been influenced by her heavy investment in the decision to take military action in Libya; the former defense secretary Robert Gates writes in his new memoir that hers was the voice that swayed the balance. (Joe Biden was on the other side.) Libya was one of the things she had managed in her stint as Secretary of State, for which she had been so praised. Also, again, Libya was supposed to be something we were done with; now it will be a question Hillary Clinton has to contend with in 2016, and, in fairness, rightly so.

      This is something Obama has to answer for, too. He made the decision to intervene militarily in Libya without invoking the War Powers Act—and that, and not some phantom version of the talking points, is the purloined letter in this case. …

      By saying that he didn’t have to get Congress’s permission because whatever we were doing didn’t rise to the level of “hostilities,” he was willing it to always be so. There was no challenge then, but there also wasn’t the kind of consent that might have put some check on the most partisan extremes in the fight about Benghazi now. Obama and his advisers had decided beforehand that this was limited, and wouldn’t go wrong; and then it did.

      And to this day, they still won’t acknowledge that failure. That’s why four Americans died in Benghazi — because the Obama administration wasn’t willing to admit that Obama’s grand scheme to intervene in Libya had turned it into a disastrous failed state and a haven for al-Qaeda, even when the CIA and DoD were warning them of it, which is noted fully in the SSCI report. It’s hubris stacked on incompetence, and Strachan is hardly the only one to have noticed this combination.

      Delete

  28. Finding Oz in the heart of Las Vegas


    A glimpse behind the curtain at CES

    This jerk just gives the response without reporting the question:


    The question he asked Matt was, "What was your Darkest Moment?"

    Matt Replied: "Do you really want to know?"

    This guy says yes, and Matt responds, but the guy reports it like this:

    "As we’re talking about his childhood, Matt tells me about a family vacation to Disney World when he was five.

    At one point, he and his mom went down a waterslide together, with Matt perched in her lap.

    On the way down, she had a heart attack and died, and he remembers everything vividly.

    I don’t really know what to say in response, and a few seconds pass in very awkward silence. Then, he suddenly bursts out in laughter."

    "You don’t get into entertainment unless you’ve got some need. It always comes from somewhere."


    Penn Jillette says: What kind of unprofessional jerk would ask that question?

    ReplyDelete
  29. Taliban Commander Tried To Force Sister Into Suicide Bombing

    11:14 AM (13 hours ago)

    ClarionProject.org Facebook Twitter Youtube
    issue 108
    01.16.14


    The Battle for Women's Rights - Join us for an educational webinar to learn how women in Muslim-majority countries are fighting for their rights in societies where they suffer from servile marriage, honor killings, and being banned from education among other issues. REGISTER NOW.


    TOPSTORIES

    Taliban Commander Forces Sister Into Suicide Bombing
    Taliban Commander Forces Sister Into Suicide Bombing

    A young girl handed herself into a Helmand police station saying her brother had told her to carry out a suicide attack. More




    When States Sanction Discrimination Against Women

    Integrating Islamic law into family law in European and North American societies poses a serious threat to womens' rights.

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    Saudi Men: Women's Makeup Is Cause of Increased Molestation

    Over 86 percent of Saudi men said that excessive makeup was the main cause of the increase in public molestation of women in the Kingdom.

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    Lebanese Library Torched in Tripoli by Islamists

    Two thirds of library's 80,000 books were destroyed, many of them irreplaceable Muslim and Christian texts and manuscripts.

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    Sexual Assault on 7 Yr Old Sparks Outrage in Saudi Arabia
    Sexual Assault on 7 Yr Old Sparks Outrage in Saudi Arabia



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  30. And finally, from the 'who could have guessed department' -



    Jihad Watch


    More explosives at Czech "Palestine" mission


    Thumbnail image for PragueEmbassy2.jpg


    You'd almost think that the "Palestinians" were plotting some violence, but that, of course, would be absolutely inconceivable!

    "More explosives at Czech Palestine mission," from AAP, January 16 (thanks to Maxwell):

    CZECH investigators have discovered explosives at the Palestinian embassy complex in Prague where a possibly booby-trapped safe killed the ambassador on January 1, police say.
    Police discovered 12 illegal weapons following the explosion at the embassy that killed Ambassador Jamal al-Jamal, but this is the first time that authorities said explosives were also found in the new complex that includes the embassy and the ambassador's residence.

    It remains unclear what caused the safe to explode but the ambassador's death is being investigated as a case of negligence.

    Al-Jamal had only started his posting in October.

    Police spokesman Tomas Hulan said they have sent the explosives for testing at Prague's Institute of Criminology.

    The Palestinians have officially apologised after the Czech Foreign Ministry demanded an explanation, accusing the Palestinians of breaching international obligations.

    The ministry said on Thursday it would not immediately comment on the explosive.

    Police said on Thursday they received a letter from the Palestinian authorities saying the weapons were given to them as gifts by the officials of the former communist Czechoslovakia.


    "Dear Ludvik: Your Christmas present was da bomb. Thank you soooo much! Love, Mohammed"

    Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet bloc that had warm ties with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.
    According to police, the Palestinians said the weapons were never used and always kept in a safe....


    Oh, well! Then it's okay!

    Posted by Robert Spencer on January 16, 2014

    JihadWatch





    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was probably one of those Gag Safes.

      Delete
    2. ...a Palestinian Jack-in-the-Box...It had people in stitches. Jamal is such a piece of work.

      Delete
  31. Asturias - Ana vidovic

    ...off to the range to work with my girl...She is practicing for NRA rangemaster...

    ReplyDelete
  32. New post is up, and that one isn't about Israel either!

    ReplyDelete